Walt, for Andrew, 1.22.24

I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions,But really I am neither for nor against institutions, (What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the destruction of them?)Only…

Thought of the Day

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. –Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, 41

You, Too?

I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful; for not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world,…

The Patron Saint of All Outsiders

This French version of Kafka, this cross between Pascal and Orwell remains unclassifiable. She is intellectually stateless,  prophet without any country in which she can be sure of honor. A Catholic Jewess who criticized impeccably…

Ginsberg’s Gratitude

And I never realized that [the cornices of the buildings] meant spiritual labor, to anyone—that somebody had labored to make a curve in a piece of tin—to make a cornucopia out of a piece of…

Notice What You Notice

Primo Levi:  I never stopped recording the world and people around me, so much that I still have an unbelievably detailed image of them. I had an intense wish to understand, I was constantly pervaded…